Ramblings about intense training during the off-season.

It’s weird how returning to the basics of training can often improve your fitness more than the honing effects of peaking for specific events. Maybe it’s because I feel less stress now than when I had to perform perfectly on “race” day. Or maybe it’s because I’m just getting the rest/recovery I needed all along or because I’m re-including the foundation training that I need to support the extreme efforts that I continue to do to keep my level of fitness reasonably high. I imagine that a good portion of the improvements are coming from my inclusion of a couple of ferociously intense efforts in the “pain cave” each week. I think the infamous Ultramarathon man, Dean Karnazes, used the expression: “If it doesn’t require extraordinary effort, you’re not pushing hard enough.” Whatever the case, I feel amazingly strong and fit right now—both with my high end sustainable power and with my muscular strength. In fact, I’d bet I’m stronger now than I was during this entire year in both explosive and sustained climbing power and in distance riding.

This begs an interesting question. Why do I continue with high-end fitness training during the off-season when my target events are 10 months away? Don’t I need a period of low-end base training or mental freshness to restart my training year? Probably…to some extent. But I suppose these perspectives don’t satisfy my desire to continually improve. And I’m afraid if I give myself an inch, I’ll take a mile, when it comes to relaxation. I think many athletes sacrifice more of their hard-earned fitness than they need to by over-resting and reducing nearly all their intense training efforts for the sake of “base-training” during the off-season.

I won’t try and convince others of any of my unorthodox training perspectives nor do I feel the need to justify why I like to push hard regularly and adhere strictly to the adage “Quality over Quantity”. I’d rather just worry about what I like to do. In fact, one question that has crossed my mind a lot recently is: “Why would my body adapt to a higher level of exertion and sustainability, if it’s already capable of doing what I demand of it?” Doesn’t the obvious response to this question apply year round?

While I know It’s normal to live in cycles of varying volume and intensity throughout the training week/month/year, I think an athlete has to regularly “remind” his/her body of exactly what (an)aerobic suffering is, if they don’t want to lose too much ground in the off-season. After all, in nearly every other pursuit in life, I’m expected to be at some minimum level of performance and can’t simply take a complete “off” season from life to rest for long from the challenges I face. Why should I think this principle doesn’t apply to training too?

I guess this banter just means one thing for me if I plan on cyclically, yet continually, getting fitter—even during the off-season. I’ve got to ‘put up’ or ‘shut up’. This includes my continuing efforts to try and eat fewer doughnuts and keep up a variety of complementary activities that all contribute to my end goals. And of course, I’ll make sure the intensity is occasionally high enough to bring on blood-shot eyes and a viscerally fierce pain that elicits a deep training stimulus for me to keep getting stronger.

Have fun!

J-Naut